Cloud Computing in Manufacturing

Why waste time when you got all the latest technology? Time is money and with all the newest software, manufacturing aspects have gotten easier to work with. Manufacturers these days have started using cloud based manufacturing applications including Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).

So now the main question is, why should manufacturers switch to Cloud Computing? Well here are the reasons mentioned by Louis Columbus in his article:

1. To increase accuracy
2. Speed up the process
3. Capitalize on internal intelligence and knowledge

Cloud based strategies help companies to have a quicker roll out, easy customization and “show potential to increase adoption rates across resellers.”

Here are some ways cloud-computing is revolutionizing the manufacturing sector:

1. Capturing and applying company-wide intelligence and knowledge through the use of analytics, business intelligence (BI), and rules engines.
2. Piloting and then moving quickly to full launch of supplier portals and collaboration platforms, complete with quality management dashboards and workflows
3. Designing in services is now becoming commonplace, making cloud integration expertise critical for manufacturers.
4. Accelerating new product development and introduction (NPDI) strategies to attain time-to-market objectives.
5. Managing indirect and direct channel sales from a single cloud platform tracking sales results against quota at the individual, group and divisional level is now commonplace across all manufacturers visited.
6. Using cloud-based marketing automation applications to plan, execute and most important, track results of every campaign.
7. Automating customer service, support and common order status inquiries online, integrating these systems to distributed order management, pricing, and content management platforms
8. Increasing reliance on two-tier ERP strategies to gain greater efficiencies in material planning, supplier management and reduce logistics costs.
9. Reliance on cloud-based Human Resource Management (HRM) systems to unify all manufacturing locations globally.

Tools like this are helping manufacturers cut down the processing time, which means more time for them to invest in other aspects of the business.

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  *Above is a summary of an article from Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2013/05/06/ten-ways-cloud-computing-is-revolutionizing-manufacturing/